sf says...

"OMG, our beloved Emperor is gone! (sorta') But don't worry: the Democrats are fanning the flames of crazy, so it's just a matter of time before they run things again."

Tuesday, February 28

Constitution? Never heard of it.

A guy waiting to be screened by airport security noticed a woman in Muslim garb--with face completely covered--breeze through the line without any screening at all. Amazed, he commented to one of the screeners, "If I was wearing this scarf over my face, I wonder what would happen?"

Admittedly, this happened in Great Britistan, where Muslims practically run the place. But bureaucrats are the same all over the world, and our own TSA has done worse.

Americans used to have one thing--unique in all the world-- to protect us from government abuses: the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Obama administration (with the help of their Democratic supermajority, when they controlled both houses of congress for two years after Barky's election) has repeatedly violated the provisions of that document, with no penalty whatsoever.

Thus for all practical purposes, the Constitution no longer has any power to limit government.

In fairness, Barky and the Dems have been helped in this by generations of leftist judges--including many on the Supreme Court--who voted to let earlier Dem presidents and congresswhores do whatever it was they wanted at the moment--almost always something that would get them votes.

It'd sure be nice if we could impeach, imprison and/or execute pols and judges who willfully violate the Constitution. Sadly, it doesn't look as though we'll ever do that. Which likely means that the government will continue to get bigger and fatter and more corrupt, and more dictatorial.

Saturday, February 25

17 scientists--including Nobel winner--say global warming is BS

This warrants your attention: The article at the link notes that Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, resigned from the American Physical Society over that organization’s support of global warming--now cleverly re-branded as "climate change."

Shortly thereafter 16 prominent scientists, including physicists, meteorologists and climatologists, came forward to express solidarity with Giaever in a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

All 17 said, in effect, that global warming isn't supported by sound science. Further, the 16 who wrote to the WSJ said that the top clique of leaders of the global warming religion know the planet isn't warming significantly.

"Americans aren't stupid"...unless they believe drilling for oil will help us

Consider this statement:

Now, some politicians always see this as a political opportunity. And since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling. We hear the same thing every year. Well the American people aren’t stupid.

The speaker was Obozo, the mystery man who managed to get a Social Security number from a state he never visited before he got it.

Surely you heard Barky make the statement quoted above, right? Because it's so astonishingly stupid you'd think it would have made the nightly news on all of the alphabet networks.

I wanna take Barky's statement apart line by line, to show you how the trick works. Keep in mind that his objective here--a step toward winning a second term--is to defend against rising gasoline prices. This requires that he defend his order pulling drilling permits in the Gulf and refusing to issue others.

This would seem an impossible task, but he sets it up by saying "Some politicians always see this [rising gas prices] as a political opportunity. And since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas."

This statement makes it appear that any criticism of his policies is simply folks trying to score political gains. Since everyone knows this is common in politics, it gets lots of people nodding in agreement with whatever follows.

Second sentence is a debating tactic called "reductio ad absurdem," where you make the other guy's position seem ridiculous, by reducing it to an absurd extreme. It's like saying "Democrats claim that simply by keeping your tires aired up you can get 100 miles per gallon." Since people intuitively know that's not plausible, it makes the claimant seem like a charlatan.

Finally, Obozo's characterization of the alleged Republican "three-point plan" as the same step repeated 3 times implies that the very idea of trying to reduce oil and gas prices by actually drilling for oil is an absurd notion--one which only simpletons not sophisticated enough to grasp the subtleties of international energy markets could possibly believe.

Note well these tactics, since you'll be seeing them a gazillion times between now and the election. They're what substitutes for reasoned debate when the speaker can't defend a policy on rational grounds.

They're the equivalent of the old legal saying, "If the facts help your case, pound the facts; if the facts don't help your case, pound the law; and if neither facts nor law support your case, pound the table."

Finally: an honest Democratic pol!

That would be N.Y. Rep. Kathy Hochul. At a public meeting discussing the Obamacare mandate that church organizations provide abortion pills "for free," a constituent asked Kath what part of the Constitution gives the gummint power to require a religious or private organization to "pay for anything for free."

Okay, the question wasn't exactly air-tight, but the meaning was clear in context. And Kath replied, "Well, basically, we’re not looking to the Constitution on that aspect of it.”

This caused the audience to react with considerable consternation, which prompted Kath to quickly add "What I mean is, Congress has determined that the government should provide health care for everyone, so..." before falling back on the approved Democrat talking point of "Besides, churches are exempt" and "In any case, they're not required to provide anything, because the insurance company will do it for free."

Ah, well then--guess everything's just fine. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Thursday, February 23

Dems == hypocrisy

Weasel Zippers has a clip of the head of the Democrat National Committee--a dingbat named Debbie Wasserman-Schultz--excoriating the president over $3-per-gallon gasoline.

That, of course, was back when Bush was prez.

Now that Chicago Jesus is prez, and gas is $4 bucks a gallon (that is, 33% more than when Bush was prez), what does Debbie have to say about the price of gas now?

Apparently not a thing.

Amazing that there's not a single reporter with the balls to ask her about her double-standard on gas prices. She and her comrades considered three bucks a gallon a disaster when Bush is in the White House, but four bucks a gallon is fine now that the Stuttering Clusterfuck is running things.

Sunday, February 19

Risk versus reward in America

London's Economist has a story about regulation in America. It says we're being suffocated by excessive and badly-written regulations. A sample:

A Florida law requires that vending-machine labels urge the public to file a report if the label is not there.

The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which.

Bureaucrats in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the kids didn't have a city license. The list goes hilariously on.

But of course, it's not hilarious. It's horrifying.

The Founders wouldn't recognize this country. We've come so far from their original concept that it would probably save time to eliminate the entire government, all agencies and bureaus, all laws and regulations, and start over.

Richard Fernandez notes that under our current system it's far more profitable to be a shakedown artist than to be an entrepreneur. Inventing some scam like Global Warming and inducing your friends in government to adopt a scheme that will pay you to sell "carbon credits" pays far better than, say, drilling for oil.

Moreover, if you run a scam, you can't get sued, whereas if you run a business you're the target of every scam-artist and bureaucrat in the country.

Can anyone of you be surprised that today virtually no highschool kid wants to go into business, but instead wants to head to Hollywood or be a politician?

Do you see that the problem is mainly that by allowing politicians to alter the rules governing risk, reward and hassle, we've allowed them to make business relatively unattractive to kids? Accordingly, how can anyone pretend to be surprised that the kids detect the changed reward scale and choose accordingly?

Bureaucrats, liberals, big-government pols and their helpers in the media have killed this country as surely as a gunshot.

The combination of politicians who are both mathematically ignorant and would whore out their own daughters to win re-election, terminally stupid liberal Supreme Court justices who thought the Constitution was just another piece of paper, and a population whose main interest seems to be American Idol, have killed this once-thriving nation.

Of course I hear a lot of you thinking that we've got, what, 38 years before the point that interest payments exceed revenue? That should be way more than enough time to turn things around.

Well you'd think so, but I'm pretty sure that short of violent revolution, it ain't gonna happen.

I'm confident about that because I'm a numbers guy. And we both know the federal gummint will never be fixed because we know modern politicians--most of whom seem to care more about continuing to get A-list invitations, money and getting re-elected. If making the hard, painful cuts necessary to fix things would make them popular or ensure their continued re-election, they'd do it.

But in fact, making hard decisions will make them very unpopular with everyone on the Left. So the pols will no more do what's necessary to fix things than they'd cut their wrists.

And the saddest part is, the implosion could have been avoided, if our politicians had just honored the limits to government prescribe in our Constitution.

A foreigner spots what's wrong here

As we watch Obozo attend eight or ten fundraisers a day with Hollywood stars and San Francisco multi-millionaires--raising $250,000 per minute--it's amusing to watch the Democrats scream that the Republicans are "the party of the rich."

Have you heard of any of the Republican candidates holding fundraisers with tickets at anywhere near the $38,500 apiece that Obozo's parties charge? Of course not. But the Dems just keep making the bullshit charge that the GOP is the party of the rich, because the lying media let them get away with it and the majority of Obozo voters are too stupid to know it's really Dems who are the wealthy Obozo donors.

The danger to America isn't just Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of trusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be far easier to limit the damage of Obama's reign than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a populace foolish enough to elect such a man as their president.

Bad as Mr. Obama is, he's merely a symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools who made him their prince.

The U.S. may survive a Barack Obama--who is, after all, just another garden-variety socialist/incompetent. It is far less likely to survive the multitude of fools who made him their president.

Friday, February 17

Moron alert: House Dems define "reasonable profit"

Six House Democrats want to create yet another federal agency: a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits. Their desired agency would apply a “windfall profits tax” as high as 100 percent on sales of oil and gas, according to their legislation, called the "Gas Price Spike Act."

The bill seeks to impose a tax ranging from 50 percent to 100 percent on all earnings deemed "surplus," which is defined as "exceeding a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board--staffed by presidential nominees who would serve three-year terms.

If this doesn't seem sufficiently goofy/communist, here's a direct quote from the proposed bill:

(4) REASONABLE PROFIT.—The term ‘reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale.

Oh, well, thank you SO much for defining "reasonable profit" in such a clear, straightforward way. It's clear that y'all are definitely intellects of the first order.

Obozo submits budget that would violate a law; MSM yawns

Our long-proven constitutional government is being destroyed before our very eyes, by the Kenyan community organizer and his Democrat helpers.

Latest example: Last year Congress--normally an outfit that's earned the contempt of most citizens--grew some balls and passed a law stating that U.S. aid to the Palestinians would be cut off if the Palestinians tried to get the U.N. to grant them full statehood.

The Palis did that, and $60 million in U.S. aid was withheld.

Now Obie has submitted a budget that provides for resuming the flow of U.S taxpayer cash to the Palistinians, via a U.N. agency, UNESCO.

The budget does have a footnote saying that “The Department of State intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO." That's just peachy, but the problem is that Obozo is on record as bucking the will of congress.

Nothing like sending a clear message to folks who hate us that the U.S. government is totally divided on a major issue.

Thursday, February 16

NBC offers crocodile tears about gas price hike

On some goofy NBC show yesterday (I think it was "We Love Obama" but may have been "Today") Matt Lauer warned viewers that gasoline prices were about to rise significantly.

What they didn't show you was Lauer and other NBC execs laughing at the prospect of you paying a lot more for gas.

We can be confident about that because in an interview with Obozo just after Obozo's election, NBC's head newsreader (Tom Brokaw, I guess) suggested that Obie have the federal gummint *raise* the tax on gasoline so that the total price was $4 per gallon, and use the money for alternative energy and to force consumers to buy smaller cars.

These network jackoffs are ecstatic about you having to pay four bucks a gallon for gas--though they'll pretend to be all sympathetic and serious when they announce that it's coming.

They don't care how much gas costs because they have limos to take them the two miles across Manhattan to work, while you probably commute twenty times that far every day.

Tuesday, February 14

Obama's projected deficit for 2012 just a bit off--like, $700 Billion

Barack Obama-- genius, spellbinding orator, skilled planner. And knows how to choose brilliant aides and administrators, like a Treasury Secretary who cheated on his taxes and not only wasn't penalized, he was confirmed by the Democrat-controlled senate. With a team that sharp...well, is there anything they can't do?

Uh...wait.

In his first budget to Congress in February of 2009, Obie predicted that under his brilliant guidance the federal deficit would drop dramatically, from an estimated $1.841 trillion in fiscal 2009 to $557.4 billion in fiscal 2012. Everyone applauded wildly, led by the members of the Mainstream Media.

However, in the budget submitted to Congress today the White House is predicting they'll miss that target just a bit: instead of a $557 billion deficit for 2012, the White House is now predicting a deficit of... $1.33 trillion.

That's an error of over 700 BILLION bucks! WTF!! It's like they just made up a number to use in the "budget."

It must be due to the unexpectedly large cost of shutting down that notorious prison for Islamic terrorists at Gitmo.

Monday, February 13

Jack Lew is Obozo's new chief of staff. He's also a lying, cunning political hack.

Which of course makes him perfect for his new job supporting Obozo.

He's been in government damn near forever--he was Bill Clinton's budget director, then Obozo hired him for the same position before naming him chief of White House staff.

Yesterday Lew appeared on one of the Sunday news shows, and made the following statement:

You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.

He's referring to the filibuster. But in fact, budget votes in the Senate can't be filibustered. So did Lew not know this, or did he know it and simply lie on a national news program to blame the Republican minority for the failure of the Dem-controlled Senate to pass a budget?

Sunday, February 12

Grand compromise, part 2

If you're not a Catholic or a political junkie you may have missed the on-going dust-up between Obozo and the Catholic church. It concerns Obama's demand that the church offer all its female employees free contraception, including the so-called "morning-after pill."

The church has no objection to being forced to provide health insurance, but to the provision regarding the morning-after pill. The reason is that the pill prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, and the church considers that as amounting to abortion.

Of course this is only an issue because of Obama's (and his Democrat supporters') demand that every employer in the country pay for health insurance for their employees, as part of the new Nationalized Health Care Act. (I may have gotten a word or two wrong on that name.)

A day or so ago, Obozo and munchkins came up with what they considered a 'grand compromise:' They wouldn't force the church to provide contraceptive pills to employees after all. Instead, they would simply demand that every health insurance company supply these services for free.

One must stand in awe of such brilliance, that anyone could devise such a brilliant...eh, what crap. See, demanding that insurance companies provide something "for free" shows that the Obamazoids are both stupid, cunning and contemptuous of your intelligence. And because virtually no liberal or Dem grasps this, I'm gonna try to educate y'all.

See, demanding that companies provide "free" something that isn't free means the company must cover the cost from other income. It can only do this by raising prices somewhere else--or more likely, across the board on all products or services. So the result is that everyone who pays for any product is also paying for the so-called "free" product or service.

The church wasn't objecting to the cost, but to the fact that the govt was demanding that they provide something that Catholicism considers a huge sin. And Obozo's so-called "compromise" doesn't change this at all.

The "cunning" charge comes from the fact that Obozo and his top advisors thought that none of us common folk--educated at ordinary state universities instead of vaunted ivy schools like Hahvahd--would be able to grasp that this so-called compromise wasn't a compromise at all.

The "contempt" part arises from the fact that they knew *someone* out in flyover country would blow the whistle on 'em about this bald-face lie, and yet they apparently decided to go ahead anyway, secure in their belief that the MSM would tout this as a huge compromise and cover up the fact that it was no such thing.

Today (2/12) Obozo's chief of staff, Jacob Lew, doubled-down on the bet, telling reporters that the Obama administration is done negotiating and will finalize its plan requiring insurance companies to provide free contraception to women working and studying at religious institutions.

Predictably, Lew styled the compromise as consistent with his boss's "belief that a woman has a right to all forms of preventive health care, including contraception."

Of course as Lew and Obozo both know quite well, no one is claiming women don't have the right to any desired form of health care. Instead the argument is over whether the government has the right to force employers who believe abortion is a great sin to provide what amounts to abortion services.

Economist who predicted health costs would fall says the opposite a year later

Ever hear the name Jonathan Gruber?

No? Don't feel left out. Gruber is a PhD economist at M.I.T. who was awarded a $392,000 NO-BID contract by the Obama administration to predict what effect Obama's and the Dems so-called "Affordable Care Act" would have on the price of health insurance.

This was back in 2010, before the crap act was crammed down the throat of most of the public. And can you guess what Gruber wrote?

Then last year officials in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado hired Gruber to do essentially the same thing for them--analyze the effect of Obamacare on their citizens. And...surprise!!: In these reports Gruber wrote that 59 percent of Americans would see their insurance costs RISE by an average of 31 percent!

Whoa! Didn't Obozo and his MSM supporters tell us just a year earlier that by swallowing this piece of crap act, health insurance would cost LESS for almost everyone?

Why yes, yes they did. In other words, his 2011 report reached a diametrically opposite conclusion from the one publically touted by the Obozo regime just a year earlier.

So...two questions. First, what could possibly explain the two radically different predictions by the same PhD economist in a year's time?

When asked to explain this, Gruber shrugged and said, "Well, back in 2010 I'd scored some really fantastic mushrooms, and I spent most of the rest of that year stoned out of my gourd. So whenever I looked at pages of numbers they all ran together, turned rainbow colors and started doing a conga line across my desktop. So when the deadline arrived for my contract report, I just pulled stuff out of my ass."

I may have missed a word or two in that quote. Sorta like Gruber's first analysis. But don't sweat it--it's close enough for government work.

Alternatively, could it just possibly be that Gruber took what amounts to a $392,000 bribe to write what the Dem/socialists of the Obozo administration wanted him to write, to help get the Socialized Medicine Act passed?

Second question: why has it taken so long for this reversal to come to light and why has this total reversal gotten zero coverage in the MSM?

Answer: The MSM didn't want you to know about it, because it makes their god-king, Barry the 1st, look like he's either a liar or an incompetent clusterfuck.

Saturday, February 11

Obama "compromise" on contraception mandate is an insult

You may have heard that as part of the mandatory health insurance rammed down our throats a year ago, Obama had issued an edict requiring all employers to provide insurance that would pay for birth control--including the so-called "morning-after pill" that Catholics consider as equivalent to abortion.

Faced with this government decree--not a duly-passed law, but an edict--Catholics strongly objected. And the issue took off.

Now in a press conference, Obama has *allegedly* (according to the lying media) "compromised" on this diktat.

I don't know what's sadder: the arrogance or stupidity of any politician who thinks this alleged compromise will actually fool the public, or the absolute pig-ignorance of a politician who thinks demanding that a company provide something for free makes that true.

For those of you under 40 or so, or unfamiliar with the details of economics (which is a BIG club): If a good or service costs anything, demanding that a company provide it "for free" is like demanding that gravity stop. The demand obviously can't overrule reality.

All the demand or edict does is force companies to fund the cost from other revenue. To claim otherwise is on the level with babies who initially think that when they cover their eyes, objects cease to exist.

Sadly, half of the population will read the headlines and think this really is a brilliant compromise that substantively changes the effect of the edict.

And interestingly, a good percentage of Catholics will be in this group. You can already see the early indicators, as some of the bishops are commenting approvingly.

When conservatives warn that the U.N. and other international agencies have a pro-Islam agenda and regularly over-reach, liberals/"progressives"/Democrats laugh and snicker about tinfoil hats and how easily conservatives are spooked.

Well, check this out: Seems a 23-year-old Saudi, Hamza Kashgar, posted three comments on Twitter that were interpreted by many Muslims as insulting Mohammed. In short order 13,000 Muslim fanatics in Saudi had joined a Facebook page demanding that the guy be executed for the alleged insult (quoted in full below).

Understandably fearing for his life, Kashgar decided to ask for asylum in New Zealand. Unfortunately the flight to NZ had a stop in Indonesia.

This had a crucial effect on the 23-year-old's life, because even though Indonesia doesn't have an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, it has a Muslim government.

Saudi authorities asked the international police agency Interpol to put out an arrest notice for Kashgar. Acting on this alert, Indonesian authorities arrested him and plan to turn him over to Saudi authorities.

Now, because Indonesia is just another wacko Muslim country of no significance to Americans, very few of you grasp the significance or danger of that story, so let me explain: Muslim fanatics were able to use an international police agency--one fully supported by the government of the U.S.--to arrest a guy in another country for making a remark they found insulting to their religion.

If you did something that some crazed raghead imam in Saudi Arabia (or any other Muslim country) screamed had offended Mohammed, what agency or law would prevent exactly the same thing from happening to you?

Answer: Absolutely nothing.

Oh, and the allegedly insulting tweet--the one that 13,000 wackos found offensive enough to call for the death of the person who posted it? "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you … I will not pray for you."

God help us. Because our elected officials demonstrably are not and will not. In fact they seem to be actively helping to install islamic laws here in the U.S.

Update: In February of 2012 Kashgar was turned over to Saudi authorities. He has been in jail in Saudi Arabia ever since and faces a possible death penalty.

Tuesday, February 7

Obozo press secretary spins unemployment

The cunning liars of the Obama administration have no equals when it comes to simply making stuff up to spin what would ordinarily be bad news into non-damaging news.

Case in point: Obozo press secretary Jay Carney was asked whether part of the reason for the recently reported drop in official unemployment to 8.3 percent could be that a million people have stopped searching for work--meaning the government doesn't count them as unemployed.

Carney responded,

A large percentage of that [the million-plus who just stopped looking for work] is due to younger people getting more education, which in the end is an economic positive," Carney said. "This increase in the number of people leaving the work force has been a trend and a fact since 2000, because of an aging population, which is not to say this is wholly -- that's not to say that I would wholly disregard as an issue." Carney had been asked about the 19 million underemployed or unemployed Americans, and about people who had left the work force.

Gosh, Jay, if a big chunk of the dropouts have done that to get more education--certainly a plausible theory, which is why your guys concocted it--shouldn't we have seen college enrollments go up by that amount? So...did that happen?

And the last-second pivot to blame the number on "an aging population": One would think the number of people reaching retirement age is essentially constant from year to year.

If the presnit were a Republican you can bet the press would be asking followups that would expose the press secretary's excuses and lies. But because the press is totally Dem/lib/socialist, no one asks the really probing questions.

About Me

Ex-AF pilot. While airliners are very safe, flying a single-pilot jet can be extremely demanding, especially in bad weather. It's a *huge* tribute to engineers that today's commercial jetliners are so amazingly safe!